Fraught are releasing their next album in three parts, and the first of them, Pillar I: Ashes Of Verdant Collapse, arrives on 7 November through Apocalyptic Witchcraft. It holds two songs.
Splitting a record this way is a practical argument as much as an artistic one. Two songs on a cassette will be heard; a full album from a band at this level often is not, and three releases buy three chances at attention over a year rather than one. It also lets the writing stay unresolved, which is what the band appear to want here. "Detritivore" ends in feedback and noise that deliberately leaves the larger work open.
The subject is ecological collapse, argued without much hedging. "Humanity has become a species feeding on its own waste, a civilisation sustained by the poison it produces," the band said. "Contamination has become the very foundation upon which we stake our future." They call the EP a portrait of human triumph rendered indistinguishable from total annihilation.
It was recorded at Last Light Studios and mixed by Shauny Cadogan, who has done Coscradh, Diocletian and Malthusian, which places the record precisely in the Irish underground it comes from. The members have passed through Coldwar, Mortichnia, Slave Zero and Wound Upon Wound, and the band took this name in 2020.